Thank you very much, I think it is very useful and enlightening for the discussion, and to know better from where you stand.
I too prefer much better the manifesto II compared to the III…
And as of today, I prefer the CFI approach to humanism than the American Humanist Association approach.
Besides, according to this wrongful caricature, the US is depicted as the “kingdom of selfish materialistic capitalist greed” etc.
But as a point of fact, the US is, correct me if I am wrong, today’s powerhouse in terms of scientific (including human sciences) production, by any standards.
If you follow the Nobel Prize, you will notice that many awardees come from Europe and often were trained there, but moved to the US because it is there were these talented researchers could find the best environment to pursue their research.
I was stunned when I went in SF, to the De Young museum, by the quality of the place. Not to mention the splendid nature of the park surrounding the museum.
Finally, I contacted many US top researchers, and they are most often very available and generous.
I only have a moment, but couldn’t resist pointing out,
in reality, excessive greed” etc. that we’ve come to see exists throughout the world.
Yes but the caricature would like that it is the US which the most embodies selfish materialistic capitalist greed, isn’t it?
So this trend of thought, this caricature, doesn’t stand. This is my point.
Yeah we are the birthplace of Hollywood Thinking, so yeah we’ve cranked it into overdrive and exported it. Yet, history makes clear that human greed and despotism’s only limit’s are the available resources and technical means and ability to convince the people of one’s own power.
Although this holds a lesson in my key observation about the need to learn to appreciation the Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide.
Historically we Americans fawn all over ourselves for being such a great American people and how we made this the greatest nation on Earth. Which is all true enough.
Still the reality of the American Saga is that it’s the land’s bounty of this undefended land that provided the resources and space that enabled we the people who settled to become great.
Centuries of self-absorbed thinking, and self-serving behavior (with a gross disregard for other creatures and humans) and we’ve managed to degrade this wondrous cornucopia to shadow of what it was a mere three centuries ago.
I don’t understand what you are saying with that?
Are you boiling down my argumentation into me having been brainwashed by Hollywood?
I did not watch many Hollywood movies, and France, and my personal family background, is very anti-American.
France has two strong political tendencies, one on the left which is socialism/communism, which is you guessed it, inherently Anti-American.
The other on the right which is Gaullism (from the name of the Général de Gaulle) which is also Anti-American.
Would you like to stop technical development in order to put an end to the problems you point to here (i.e. humans greed, despotism, and destruction of nature)?
From what I know, many people morally opposed despotism and exploitation. IMO, this goes in contradiction with the statement “human greed and despotism’s only limit’s are the available resources and technical means and ability to convince the people of one’s own power.”
If, according to what I consider a wrongful caricature, the industrial society framework, embodied as its fullest by the US, was to be all but materialist greed, the US should not demonstrate the prominent aspects I discussed in #61.
I’m not talking about you on a personal level, I’m talking society and mass media’s diet. All of which has gone global, and in fact has been going global for half a millennia.
No, it’s more like a virus vector.
Besides,
did you ever hear of Elvis Presley in France? I’ll wager you did. We do live in a global society? I’ll bet you can still be Anti-American and love rock’n roll and be infected by trends from other countries.
Also, a lot of “Anti-American” is plain and simple jealously, so what’s that really tell us?
Oh that’s funny, you just brought back a memory. It may have changed over the decades but from my experience French aren’t near as anti-American as they are anti-German. I say this because in the mid seventies I did a little hitchhiking in France to Lyon from Switzerland. In my hitchhiking I’d always speak German first, but in France I learned early on, I was much better off starting in English, and only reaching for the German if I had to.
Oh and of course some would say, the French think they are god’s gift to mankind and look down upon everyone.
Just saying all sorts of ways to look at it. 
No because I’m not that unrealistic.
However, that doesn’t change anything about the fact that the way we’ve allowed technological development (to turn cancerous), and lust for ever more, to dominate all our thinking, is going to destroy this planet’s ability to support us and will usher in a entire new and radical different epoch in the history in Earth’s evolution.
Probably as radical as what happened 66 million years ago, although it’ll take a couple hundred years to play out.
This is the physical reality we have set into motion and that we are impotent to turn around. It is what it is.
Oh my gosh, the memories. Our family visited there a few times during my high school years. But the memory still sparkles because once I had my mind totally, and profoundly blown away at the Vincent VanGogh exhibition. I always liked him, but standing in front of the real deal, literally inches from my eyes, and his lusciousness oil paints, you could feel him smearing it on, and it was so thick that the oil paints captured light and bounced it back like nothing I’d ever seen. Some images utterly froze me to the spot and I had to get dragged away by impatience sisters. The experience grabbed right into my heart and viscera, it was a religious experience like nothing I’d ever experienced up to then. Art wise the only other experience that gets close was at the Bern, CH art museum with its Rembrandt’s, the detail and grandeur of his massive landscapes, utterly stunning. And his pencil sketch were amazing also, the way he could hid a figure behind a full bush, easy to miss, but just enough there to catch the eye that was actually searching for stuff. Wonderful. Though VanGogh had a way of reaching into my emotions, like Rembrandt didn’t - he was simply visually overpowering and amazing.
Golden Gate Park is pretty cool, used to have huge free rock concerts in one of those fields back in those hippy days. I only managed one by luck ( I get by with a little help from my friends ), after high school and after the heyday had passed, Jefferson Starship, still it was a fun early experience with a bunch of real and wannabe hippies.
Okay, and your point is?
Well we did elect the ugliest of greed sodden, short sighted and stupid, self-serving Americans to become our president.
As Lausten will point out, we also elected him out of office, but damage has been done and it’s still not over.
If we are the kingdom of greed, that’s only because we had the greatest cornucopia at our disposal. I’m not saying we don’t also have many good qualities, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
But I’m tired of ignoring the dark side of this coin obsessive progress and consumerism. As Lausten pointed out recently, look who the richest people are and how they made their money. But look at Dubai (UAE), if you’re search for the real kings of greed and glitter and pea-brained thinking, it’s Saudi Arabia and related fiefdoms.
I don’t know what your argumentation is
Are we? Dutch and British settlers were pretty greedy. They came from Roman Catholic traditions of conquering. Throw some Viking pillaging in there. The rest of the world isn’t exactly innocent.
Yes, and I’ve acknowledged that in various post these past few days.
Lausten I said Hollywood Thinking, not the birth of greed.
Hollywood Thinking is the super steroid that turned our need for greed ballistic.
Then the 60s came along and scientists began learning about the consequences of all this cool stuff we were doing and getting.
Early on we were all into being educated on the dark side of our wonderful progress where every solution to a problem, seems to create unforeseen problems, that in cases are even worse than the problems being solved.
But by and by it because clear that the only real solution required that we moderate our inbred avarice. That was expecting too much. We could discuss anything, but not the prospect of finding contentment with less. That was off the table, so we elected a Hollywood actor who convinced that never ending increase of profits was the only that matter.
And we’ve been off the races ever since. Now some want to bring a MAGA dictatorship to America and it’s terrifying how many seem to be on board with that.
One thing leads to another . . .
Not gonna get into semantics
Romantic comedies are a modern version of the European Romanticism.
I’m a little bit of both.
You’re very welcome.
I really was invited to listen to it, by a friend, at the age of 23. Before I never really listened to any of his song, just heard a little bit.
IMK, Elvis Presley’s name, image is very well-known in France, but not so many people listen to his music.
We have French equivalents, like Johnny Halliday, who are extremely popular. But people associates him to France, not the US.
Maybe leaders are jealous of the US leaders, but I don’t think Anti-Americanism stems from jealousy.
It stems from a difference in terms of values.
French political tradition is marked by centralization, the king, a certain disdain for commerce, and a form of collectivism.
So they can’t understand what’s good about the US.
I never heard anybody sounding jealous about the US influence compared to France. I think people feel uncomfortable with weakening French influence, but, IMK, it is approached as a French-French thing.
———
Of course the picture might be much more nuanced. France is not North Korea, and there are a lot of deep France-US ties. There are also just too many things the US can be admired for. I also talk from my personal perspective marked by my personal socio-cultural background which is not representative of French society as a whole. But I think that Anti-Americanism is still a thing.
Then that was in the 1970s. Maybe the generations that experienced WWII are anti-German. But the last couple of decades, I don’t think so, quite the contrary. In the 2010s, media never stopped talking about their admiration for German’s economic success.
I noticed since the start of Ukraine war a new anti-Germany discourse though, related to the ties Germany had developed with Russia.
My point is that the American culture is not about greed.
Yes there is a strong entrepreneurship culture, which is often marked by greed, materialism, show-off, etc.
But generalizing this aspect to the whole American culture makes such a wrongful, misleading caricature.
In #61, I give concrete examples of the American culture, examples which have nothing to see with materialistic greed, quite the contrary.
From my experience, I found the middle-class Americans are well-educated and caring, and I think you can hardly deny it.
Maybe you can point to some (many?) disgraceful sociological phenomena, but that doesn’t contradict my point that America is absolutely not all about materialistic greed.
Yeah, remember I’m 68yrs old, America,… Americans, have done an incredible amount stupid mistakes and tarnished a once more noble nation.
So that was all just light conversation, to be taken with a grain of salt.
Definitely.
Yeah, I’ll give you that. Our childish reaction to 9-11, when the whole world was on our side like never before, then USA war of convenience and profiteering (against a nation that the entire world understood had nothing to do with the 9-11 attack) for the Cheney/Bush family definitely made a mockery out of our projected high morals.
Okay.
Okay
match, set. 
Problem is, I come at all this with the environmental health/AGW situation foremost dead center in my awareness field.
I can understand where you are coming from, and don’t want to get into arguing nuances, since I do realize America also has some very wonderful people and aspects, I love it, wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, but it is being battered, and the trends, well there’s MAGA, some huge steps backwards there.
Lets just call this one a draw.
@citizenschallengev4 Happy that we found some kind of agreement 
Btw, I realized with our discussion about the American context of the hippie culture that it is precisely this American culture I was talking about that made the hippie movement “work” for a while in the US.
Try that in Europe….
To finish with more accuracy on the anti-Americanism thing, today there are very very few people who are full-blown communist (strong anti-Americanism) and full-blown gaullist (strong anti-Americanism).
But these two movements have had enormous influence at one point in our history (1960s), and this left traces in our nation-state political ideology called “républicanisme”[1], which of course is made of many other things. So it is of course very diluted, and time changes, etc., but it still remains. They also of course literally shaped some aspects of our actual institutions and diplomacy.
And this ideology is transmitted by the extremely centralized school system, which is mandatory for each and every citizen.
And the pupils become journalists, politicians, etc. who choose how to depict other nations, including the US; insisting on more or less positive aspects. You name it.
But again, things are changing, and I noticed the younger generations are much more English-speaking (fluency, better accent, much more prompt to speak English) than my own generation used to be.
[1] Very difficult to get out of this “republican identity” thing for a French person
Anti-americanism meaning Anti-Us feelings in France.
I would say that it is a question of generation among other things.
On one side the generation of the 1920/1930 was very grateful that the US army came in 1944 to free them. but, in the context of the cold war, USA and USSR were the two bad boys, more the first for for the communists, more the second one for most of the other.
The babyboomers followed suite, with an inflexion. For USA were in the Vietnam war, were partly guilty of the killing of Salvador Allende and Pinochet putsch, and so.
And now ?
USA is a super power, which is confronted to many difficulties. It is able to make catastrophic choices as helping the talibans in Afghanistan against URSS or making the second Iraqi war.
Trump makes us afraid.
We are conscious that OTAN is needed in front of Russia and China.
But most are conscious that Europe needs its autonomy, its foreign policy and its army.
In a multi-polar world, alliance with USA is needed, but not as subjects, as partners.